The tax cuts war made us go broke. we are spending so much on the war now, and they just approved an increase in the budget for the DoD....but republicans want no new taxes. Sure, we need to cut programs, but the cuts nessicary to balance the budget would be Draconian, especially if nobody looks at the 500 pound gorilla in the room that is the defense budget.

I disagree. Wages are much more important factor than taxes. If there is option of hiring American or Chinese for same job which one you think company will take? Wages are so much lower in China that even if U.S. gov stops collecting taxes altogether it would still be cheaper to do work overseas.

In top to this, as mookiemookie said, companies hire only as many employees as are needed to get job done. Hiring unnecessary employees is bad business. It unnecessarily cuts shareholders' profits and I as shareholder would not tolerate that!

Default.
It'd be the best thing that ever happenned to USA.

Throw out the "Federal" (privately owned) Reserve.
Tell the IMF where to go.
Let USA print US Dollars again.
Nobody for Uncle Sam to borrow from, and pay interest to.
They can't spend what they haven't got.
Do away with the Income Tax & Socialism.
Let Uncle Sam finance himself with Tarrifs & Excise Taxes, just like he used to.

You depend on deliveries of all kinds of ressources from other countries. Without these, your people cannot work, since there will be no wokring economy. Your society will fall apart. And why will there be no such deliveries in sufficient degrees anymore? Becasue you betrayed the world and have stollen too much money from other people whose money you leased, but did not pay back - that tells everybody that you cannot be trusted. Much of your heavy industry you have sold away carelessly or allowed to degrade so that now it is rotten and not compatible anymore, especially compared to Asian and European companies. Your powergrid is a mess. Your road grid falls into pieces. And whjat you are proud of, yxour computer and hightech industry, vitally depends on rare precious ores and earths from Africa and China whose names most people never have heared of but without which you cannot do.

But you want to cut right those international economic ties that are vital and indispensable for your very own self-interest? Not to mention that you would cause a tsunami by going bancrupt throughout the developed world, too. Is this what we are left with to expect from America: first messing things up by making debts, debts, and more debts, and when it all collapses saying "Not our problem"?

Probably. Already Nixon's finance minister once told the Europeans: "The dollar is our currency, but it is your problem." Thank you. Maybe it serves us right. Maybe we should have kicked you already back then. But we didn't. Like nobody reacted to the alarm bell of the oil crisis of 71 as well.

Isolationism does not work in this world anymore, Snestorm, not last of the reasons is self-interest and survival. Your scenario is not rescue. It is suicide.

On the deadlock between both parties, Obama already had agreed to huge compromises, and if the relation between both parties would be normal, the Reps already would have worked out a compromise. It'S just that the Tea Partry movement in them sees any compromise as weakness and that their hate on Obama for the lost election is so irrational and that bitches like Psalin have been so successful in poisening that now it is just about doing as much damage to the president as humanly possible - even at the cost of the nation that gets blinded and deafened by their vitriol.

Isolationism worked very well for them before, and it can work very well for them again.

USA was self-sufficiant before, and there is no reason why it can't be again.

Beyond that, I hardly think every nation in the world would turn their backs to her.

The question that every American should ask is that when will their country default on its debt?

How do you pay that amount of debt?


Raising the ceiling is obviously not a solution to reduce this debt in the long run.

What kind of austerity measures that will be needed to control this debt. Large debt usually is related directly with decreased quality of life and rising prices(inflation) and the reduced value in currency in general.

That is a dangerous fallacy (that Jarred Diamond has reflected in depth about in his book "Collapse"): that something that worked in past conditions therefore will work in future conditions. Usually, the militarey is most pronbe for this thinkling error, it always starts the next war in the way it has won the last one. However, in this case discussed here, it is not true. The world, the economy has changed. Your dependencies are others than back then, and they are more intense - as long as you do not wish to give up your hightech industry and computer. Even the planned electric revolution to end the carbon era would not be possible without massive deliveries of needed ores and substances withiut which you cannot do it and that you do not have in North America.

As long as you do not all become farmers and trapperds again, you need a working economy to offer people sufficient jobs so that they can earn their living. And your economy is a highly depending, vulnerable thing, and much of it is in a pity state, with major parts of its former glorious branches outdated, gone, externalised, sold away.

There is no return to the days pre WWI and Roosewelt . This US today is not the US of the 60s and 70s, or the 40s. It is not the US of one and two hundred years ago.

However, it seesm to be a pattern in US politics. In a nutshell, Dems increase spendings and go on the international offense, Reps cut it and go isolationistic. Like a sine wave it goes like this, up and down, back and forth.

If you betray your creditors by several trillion, they will remember that and it will serve as a warning to others.

Plus: before, the US will have inflicted crippling damage to global economic structrures and finances by defaulting. We in europe pay until today for and feel the aftermaths of the US-made housing and credit crunches that started in 2008, the ammount of wealth the American drama, made in the US, has destroyed for Europeans in Europe, both in live investements as well as future financial securites, are monumental. And therefore, many still are pissed. The dollar feels it, and some countries even saw their banks stopping to deal with American credits and bonds (amongst them: yours! :D http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/show...light=riksbank ) . China is in full action to reshift its reserves away from the dollar, and is reducing its focus on exporting to the US, wanting to boost internal consummation instead.

This time nobody will let America off the hook just because it shows a Californian tooth-paste-advertising smile. All the world is closely monitoring it, tight-lipped. And nobody wants to hear just an easy joke.

P.S. Ignore the "you". I forgot for a while that you are not an American. :)

Very well put. Demand influences production, not the other way around.

If the customer/potential customer has more money to purchase stuff, they will buy more stuff, which increases demand for stuff, which makes hiring more people to make stuff profitable for the company that sells stuff.

No company is going to increase production (hire more people) unless there is a reasonable expectation that the extra production will be sold.

I am faced with this situation at the company I work for all the time.

I want to hire someone (increase production). But before I am allowed to hire them, I need to make a business case to my senior management where I demonstrate that the demand (from our clients) for this person will result in contracts exceeding the costs of the new hire.

If I can't make that case, we don't hire them. It sucks because I lose good resumes all the time. But I have to find the demand first, before I can increase the production.

Cutting the taxes for the company will not influence this formula no matter how badly some politicians want it to be true.

That is the other issue that concerns me. We have to recognize that it took us decades to get into this hole and it will probably take decades to get out of it. There is no way we can solve this "debt problem" in the time of one term of the House.

What we need is some sort of commitment that this will be a multi-generational solution of gradual cuts and redesigning of the government programs.

But multi-generational does not work with the House, where the representatives are only interested in their re-election in two years.

I don't know if a constitutional amendment is the right solution, but it may be the only way we can force, and force is the right word, congress to come up with a mulit-generational plan and then stick with it.

There are no quick fixes. Unfortunately party politics needs quick fixes as we have elections every two years.

We need to make small changes in our spending, then allow the market economy time to adjust. Then make more small changes, allow the market economy time to adjust. Rinse and repeat for 50 years until we can get this problem fixed.

Again, it took us decades to get in to the mess, it is illogical to expect it to be fixed in one House Term.

If only we could elect politicians would be interested in the long term health of our government and not just their political career.


:har::har::har::har::har::har::har:

I kill me sometimes with my fantasies.

Problem is, we jumped on board the whole globalism thing. Just about everything here is manufactured in china, and most corporations are global, with offices all over the world. Unfortunately, in the world we live in, where financial gain is concerned, patriotism ALWAYS takes a back seat.

we cant be a consumer economy if no one has money to buy anything. The thing is, people dont see things in logical terms anymore. They see it as "dont let the other side get what they want". The republicans and democrats are all greedy fat old men, with little concern for the middle class and ridiculous breaks for the corporations that "persuade" them into bailing them out. Its not like the corporations give a god dam about their workers. Instead of giving them a wage they can live off of without having to worry about when the next paycheck is coming , they keep paying them less and less, and cutting costs wherever possible.

and the republicans, who refuse to raise taxes on the wealthy, are killing the country. The wealthy got tax BREAKS while the middle class got screwed. people living paycheck to paycheck have no room to breathe, while the wealthy sit on their ass in their second home up in Avalon. Only a greedy politician wouldn't raise taxes on the wealthy when its the only thing we can do to save ourselves from burying ourselves in debt

Of course, when the corporations get whacked, then they take it out on the workers. theyre so desperate to keep their rich lifestyle that they sack the workers wages and cut down anywhere they can. Corporations who hire illegal aliens to do the dirty work for nothing while the legal American cant get a job anywhere for a decent wage to live off of.

With the mind-blowing costs of the war, the corporations sticking it to the little guy, and the politicians sitting on their old wrinkly ass and doing nothing about it, is why were going down the drain.

It's easy to be hypercritical when you're young and still know everything.

+1.

congress is too busy helping the ones with money instead of helping the people who actually need it the most. but why should they? free speech can be in the form of money now, so why listen to words? those are so last century.

well said and i agree with neal in that we need a flat tax of 15% but i want it to be on EVERYONE even those on wellfare and social security of which i am in the later catagory.

then institute a national sales tax of 5% on every purchase with no loopholes or exceptions and you triple the revenues coming into goverment overnight.

next while im being king for a day i would eliminate the IRS and homeland security along with the federal reserve as well as fanny mae and freddy mac, stop all funds going to support the united nations and sever all ties to the IMF banks as well as stop ALL foreign aid to ALL countries (if we cant fund our own country why are we giving hundreds of billions of dollars to the countries that either hate us and want to destroy us or are loaning us money?)

what a joke, obama agreed to only spend 1.3 trillion more money instead of the 3.4 trillion he wants to spend so you think thats a huge compromise when your broke and in default already? dont make me laugh :har:

Agree 100%, except with the income tax part. Pick another tax please, as Ore-gone has the highest(?) income tax in the nation. I'd make it harder to weasle out out of paying. (see pelosi and the exemptions for obamacare)
I say, if you vote for higher taxes, by god you and your buddies are going to pay them too.

And welcome to the black economy.

So you are cutting and raising the same tax and expect to increase revenue and avoid the black market?

How much will they cost to get rid of and how much will new institutions which will replace them cost?

it is hard to stop the money going when you don't hand it over anyway:03:

Shut down your international trade you mean.


But then there is........

:up:

I think this picture pretty much sum's up the real problem in American Politics today regardless of party affiliation:
http://www.active-noise-reduction.co...n-ears-001.jpg


Although, this kind of obstructive mindset isn't helping either:
http://downloads.visiontoamerica.org...se-300x198.gif

Its a mexican standoff. much like the cold war. Republicans and democrats hold the decision that will make or break the country. And neither seems to want to do the right thing. Draw the line, cut our insane spending spree and start paying off the ginourmous debt we dug ourselves into.

Stop counting on the corporations to create the vast majority of new jobs and start helping small(er) buisness get back on its feet.

Defaulting isnt an option. Short term means nothing. the trend will continue, and we will soon find ourselves in a 100 foot hole with a broken shovel.

I'd agree, no-one wants to be remembered for that and all the negative connotations that it involves. Sure both sides would blame the other but it would be a failure across the board.

No, there'll be a last second deal struck. Both sides are just trying to squeeze the most out of it.